This was all preamble for the career-ending move that would be Watergate, but not before Nixon had spilled the blood of...
Tricky Dick: The nickname that keeps proving itself does so once more here.
It’s no surprise to have confirmation, in a general way, that Richard Nixon was a master of the abuse of power, for which even Republicans haven’t quite forgiven him. It’s no surprise that Lyndon Johnson played a particularly vehement kind of hardball politics, as well. Nonetheless, Hughes, a researcher at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center Presidential Recordings Program, turns up plenty of surprises in this careful analysis of tape recordings from both administrations. The kicker comes at the very beginning, as Nixon orders his lieutenants to break into the Brookings Institution in 1971: “I want it implemented on a thievery basis. Goddamn it, get in and get those files. Blow the safe and get it.” The “it” was twofold: evidence of who leaked the Pentagon Papers and proof that Johnson was playing party politics with an effort, in 1968, to bring North Vietnam to the table by halting American bombings. The sneak who told Nixon about all that? Henry Kissinger, of course, who consulted with Johnson and staff about those very negotiations and who “gained Nixon’s trust by betraying theirs.” It does Johnson no credit to learn that he also was negotiating with Nixon, who supported LBJ’s war effort more than most Democrats did. The already thick plot soon turned into a morass, as Claire Chennault’s widow, known as “the Dragon Lady,” played both sides against the middle to do favors for the definitively corrupt South Vietnamese regime, earning the attentions of Nixon and company, to say nothing of assorted spooks and spies.
This was all preamble for the career-ending move that would be Watergate, but not before Nixon had spilled the blood of thousands of Americans for his own political calculations. And therein lies the biggest news delivered in this utterly newsworthy book: Nixon “played politics with peace to win the 1968 election,” and he got away with it.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8139-3663-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Univ. of Virginia
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
PERSPECTIVES
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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